


Eletric Youth

by LilShitWayne



Series: Nesting (And Other Shenanigans) [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Background Slash, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, M/M, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use, chimera pack bounding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 17:27:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6018442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilShitWayne/pseuds/LilShitWayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josh Diaz is used to the feeling of numbness. He's also addicted to the high.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eletric Youth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jemmasimmns (laurellance)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurellance/gifts).



When Josh was fourteen he caught his father receiving a blow job from his secretary. Young himself had paced around the house, biting nails and trying to settle it all in his head. Should he tell his mother? And destroy his parents 20 years long marriage? In the end, when he crawled on the bed with his mother and sniffled that his dad was having an affair, she kissed the side of his head and whispered “I know, sweetheart”. That memory was one the only ones who didn’t feel weird and distorted after he resurrected.

After that things had gone downhill.  Gabriel Diaz was rarely home, but he when he was he would hand a large allowance to Josh and simply wink “to our little secret”. Because Mr. Diaz thought his pale, frail wife was oblivious to everything.

Mara Diaz never cried. She would always be laughing, always cooking. She would knock on his door and smile “Aren’t you going out with your friends, sweetheart?”. It was cruel to mistreat such a kind soul.

The first time he smoked a blunt, he coughed until his lungs were on flames and there were tears on his eyes. After the dizziness passed and his mouth tasted sweet like sugary tea, Josh remembered resting against Mark’s bedroom wall and laughing of a lamp for almost twenty minutes, before starting to cry.

Weed wasn’t for him, Mark had laughed, patting on his shoulder awkwardly. After marijuana Josh tried LSD. It was at a party and he was fifteen. “Why don’t you let me enjoy the party on my own? And go play with your friends?” Gabriel was such a charming person, wasn’t he?

He remembered laughing and dancing and the colorful lights and the crashing headache next day. But mostly he remembered feeling bubbly happy. The breathless feelings of something so bright inside of his chest. So bright it hurt.

LSD became a constant. When he was almost seventeen the usual gelatin square didn’t last 8 hours anymore. Barely three. Josh wasn’t afraid to admit that he searched for cocaine out of his own free will. Nobody offered him, nobody was already using it.

The cocaine high was shorter, much shorter, but it was so sharp and exciting that he got addicted in three usages. The crashing depressing feeling after the high was terrible, but it was a relief to outburst the anger and the sadness that was always present. He would cry until he felt sick and Josh _loved it._

And then he died.

* * *

Theo had said “you belong to me” and taken them to his house. Explained their deaths and offered shelter for the night. Josh didn’t know how to react. He still thought he must be in a weird hallucination. Like that one time he almost overdosed on LSD.

However, Hayden’s anger for not being able to see her sister was very much real. Theo’s glare made Josh’ stomach curl and he knew he wasn’t creative enough to hallucinate it.  
Tracy and Corey were both quiet and acting like they were corpses still.

Josh understood it. The emptiness inside of him, the same reflected on Tracy’s void eyes and Corey’s weird smell of nothingness.

When they went to sleep, Hayden and Tracy upstairs on the guest room, Josh heard the younger boy sobbing on the couch. He heard the kid crying like somebody had died instead of being resurrected, and wondered if he still had the will to cry like that.

* * *

“You’re alive!” Mara yelled, when Josh turned the corner and entered home.

Tracy and Theo probably had left by now, or maybe they were overhearing. It didn’t matter. The only thing important right now were the tears running down his mother’s face and the fact that she was shaking too much to give a decent hug.

“I’m okay, mom” Josh whispered in her hair, pulling her closer and wanting to believe his words. He couldn’t.

“I thought you were dead… you just vanished, baby, I’m so sorry that I thought you died…”

It was just like his mother to apologize for being upset “Don’t worry, I’m here”

Gabriel wasn’t home “Your father is always working now… I’m so worried, Josh”

Maybe Gabriel had been avoiding home because Mara was a fucking mess of crying and antidepressants. Or maybe he plain didn’t care.

“I’m so glad you’re home, baby” Mara whispered, when they were curled up in bed and Josh was waiting her tranquilizers took effect “I want you to have your life back, I’m not even questioning what happened”

“I was… hurt, mom” _dead_ sounded a little too harsh to say “But all I want is to have my life back too. For you to be happy again”

“ _Again?”_ Mara mumbled, closing her eyes and then falling asleep.

It felt like a punch on his face and Josh stared at the ceiling, hearing her breath for an entire hour before standing up and leaving the house.

“How much did you take, Josh?” Theo yelled, waiting for him outside the club like it wasn’t creepy as hell to follow people around.

“A lot!” and he felt nothing. “Why did you bring us back if we’re all broken?”

“Maybe you just need something else”

The next thing he felt was the electric current running through his veins, inside his nostrils and boiling on the pit of his stomach.

“How does it feel?” Theo yelled over the noise of blood rushing in his ears. He felt euphoric. Josh couldn’t remember feeling that kind of happiness. Drugs didn’t have such an absurd effect, the pain on his bones was so intense that it woke up every cell of sentiment inside of him.

The first one to return was happiness and then anger, violent fury tasting inside his mouth. He turned for Theo, who was laughing like a little kid in Christmas morning. His alpha, his killer.

The memory of having his throat ripped open rushed back and Theo’s smile only grew “It was self defense” he smiled, leaning back, arms crossed and looking like it was a goddamn photoshoot.

Life was unfair when the person you should hate more, was also the only person who could help you.

Lust was the second one, and entirely the reason he turned back on his heels and left Theo standing there. There was line between being reckless and being stupid. Shoving Theo against a wall and biting, kissing him would be just plain stupid.

 “Josh? Baby, where were you?” Mara asked, once he stumbled back home, still dizzy with the amount of feelings going through him. She was wrapped in a peignoir and the dark hair was everywhere around her pale face.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“I’m so sorry”

She walked down the stairs and wrapped him in a hug, despite Mara being a tiny thing “Whatever you’re feeling guilty for, I’ve already forgiven you”

Josh couldn’t understand how she would forgive him for being a liar, an addicted and a dead body.

* * *

The easiest thing for an addict is turning everything into a vice. First had been the drugs, then not the substances themselves but only the high… and now it was the vice to feel _anything_. Even if he had to electrocute himself every night.

Gabriel was staring at the electric bill, amazed and horrified “Since Josh’s been back, our usage has gone up 200%”

His father, who had hugged him tightly when he discovered Josh was back, looked up to Mara “This kid has a problem and he’s not telling us.”

Josh didn’t have a problem, he was a problem. Somehow, he ended up knocking on Theo’s door. The sound of his parents arguing still on his ears and his stock of cocaine under the bathroom cabinet mocking him “ _you cannot take me and you’ll keep on feeling numb, Joshie_ ”.

“I want to stay here. My parents think I’m on a friend’s house”

“Not a lie, is it?” Tracy smiled on the background.

Theo stepped aside to let him in “Corey is choosing the pizza tonight”

* * *

If you’re human and are struck by lightning, you die. Or, at the very best, suffer a cardiac arrest and severe burns.

If you’re a chimera, it hurts like hell and makes joy bubble inside of you from your toes to the hair on your head.

He had told Tracy the trigger for feeling was pain. It hadn’t been a wise advice, hence why she cornered him one day and asked “Are you ok?”

Nobody had asked how he felt until then and Josh simply shrugged and pushed her away “I’m fine.”

He wasn’t fine when Corey was laughing, when Tracy and Theo were wrestling and when Hayden appeared smelling like confusion and lust and pain. He wasn’t fine when the numbness started spreading on his chest and the happiness vanished. When depression crawled back like an old friend.

He definitely wasn’t fine when all the lights of Raeken’s house exploded and blood filled his mouth.

Theo found him on the basement, fingers shoved on cables and still smelling like burnt flesh “ _what the fuck are you doing?”_

And then his alpha was dragging him upstairs, and there was too much blood and his heartbeat wouldn’t calm the fuck down. Tracy and Corey were pacing on the dark house, she was barking with Theo and Corey was so pale he was turning invisible “Will he be okay? Will he be okay?”

He wouldn’t be ok. Theo was ripping his shirt open and punching his chest with so much force that Josh felt some bones breaking. It didn’t hurt. Instead, he fell asleep, drowned with Theo screaming “WAKE UP”

* * *

“He’s in pain” Josh woke up on a bedroom he had never been on, but knew was Theo’s. Corey’s voice was shaky, all the sassiness gone.

“He almost died again, of course he’s in pain” Tracy mocked. They were all smelling like panic and worry. Josh tried to look around the bedroom. Theo was sitting on a chair, on the darkest corner of the place, seeming to be asleep. Eyes closed, dark circles on his handsome face, and an eternal wrinkle of frustration between his eyebrows.

“Theo, can we take his pain?” Hayden, behind all of his friends, sounding like an anxious puppy “Theo?”

“We’re chimeras, we don’t take pain” Theo answered without moving “He’s reeking suffering, it’s disgusting”

“Maybe we just don’t know how” Tracy offered, taking a step closer. She opened a small smile and Josh saw the kind girl she had been before death. The shy, insecure girl who didn’t want to be a bother and was always half terrified. Tracy put a hand on his arm and her touch made him finally go back to feeling his body. It wasn’t good. He was burning, there were electric current underneath his skin, trying to break his bones and clawing on his flesh.

“You’re hurting him” Theo warned, standing up and passing a hand over his exhausted face “Leave, all of you”

“Liam took my pain away with a kiss” Hayden mentioned, a harsh blush taking her cheeks. Tracy turned to look at her and smiled.

“Oh, did he?”  
“Out, all of you” Theo interrupted the girls mockery, pushing the pack away “Josh almost died, give him rest”

“Since when do you worry?” Josh groaned, making the entire pack freeze and look up to Theo. Their alpha frowned and blinked, fake confusion all over him.

“Since always. We’re pack”

Josh felt like he had been slapped. The worst part of it all was that he genuinely wanted Theo to care.

* * *

“He called your parents. You’re staying here for a while” Corey smiled, sitting across the couch and being careful not to touch Josh “Do you still hurt?”

“I electrocuted myself to the brink of death, what do you think, Corey?”

“Sorry” Corey looked down and then smiled “Maybe the shock will help you feel? I don’t understand why your trigger is pain”

He didn’t understand because his own trigger was love. It was fitting, sweet, small Corey could only feel when he was loved.

“I wish it wasn’t. At least it’s better than Tracy’s. Hers is violence.”  
“I guess” They fell on a silence and Josh curled up more on his blankets, watching whatever Corey had picked.

“Corey, go to bed, you have school tomorrow” the phrase was so ridiculous that Josh broke in a laughter fit. Corey blinked awake from his spot on the couch and blushed furiously.

“You have deep family issues, Theo” he smiled, only to receive a murderous glare and shutting up real quick “Sorry”

“Go, we’ll have things to do tomorrow. There’s a blind alpha in town and I want him. You’re going to help me”

Did Theo realize that he couldn’t _want_ people like toys?

Corey nodded and walked out in silence.

Josh raised his chin, ready to face whatever speech Theo was going to start. “What?”

“Tracy said chamomile helps her” His alpha shrugged, handing him a mug of tea.

Josh tried really hard not to smirk and took a gulp. It didn’t help at all. His stomach was still burning and the warm liquid only made it worse. Theo caught his wince and frowned. “It’s still hurting…”

“Yeah”

“Does this pain at least trigger you? The emotions?”

“No” Josh shook his head “It’s not strong enough to make me feel anything”

Theo sighed and sat by his side, personal space be damned, taking the mug back “We’ll figure it out” He mumbled, staring at the bottom of the cup and then letting out a deep sigh.

Josh barely had time to gasp in surprise before Theo’s lips – warm, gentle and _wrong_ – were over his. It wasn’t a kiss, they both had eyes open and Theo’s mouth parted, deepening it.

Josh tried to sit up, lust boiling hot on him and he pulled Theo closer by the shirt with desperation. He was hurting and he was feeling and it was the most amazing high Josh had ever experienced.

Theo pulled back before Josh could close his eyes. He looked the younger boy, his beta, up and down and smiled “Did it help?”

It hadn’t. Theo hadn’t taken away the pain with a kiss, like Hayden had suggested. However, now Josh felt more than just nothingness and his heart was hammering.

“Yes”

“Good”

Josh didn’t fall asleep that night. Wondering if _maybe_ Theo would kiss him again next time he almost died.

                                      


End file.
